Itchy eyes, runny noses and cars coated in yellow powder — yes, pollen season is kicking into full gear in the Orlando area.
Most of Central Florida has seen a later start — 10-20 days later than normal –to the pollen season this year due to the wetter and cooler winter we’ve experienced.
In Central Florida, the biggest pollen producers tend to be giant oak trees that line many parks and neighborhoods.
Oaks often cause weeks of high pollen values because of their long period of pollen production.
Many Central Floridians will be stocking up on their choice of over-the-counter or prescription medications in hopes of combatting congestion, but here are some simple steps for protection:
Stay indoors between 5-9 a.m. This is the time when most plants tend to pollinate. Plan outdoor activities for late afternoon, or after it rains, when pollen levels are lower.Keep windows closed in your home and car. Cool with air conditioners, not fans. Clean air filters more often to eliminate pollen from entering your home.Wear protective masks when performing outdoor chores to reduce your chances of inhaling pollen.Change clothes, take a shower and wash your hair when you come inside. This will help remove any pollen from spreading around homes and onto carpets and furniture.
Oh, and a simple car wash will get the powder off your vehicle.
Just think, 90-degree temperatures, high humidity and daily storms are right around the corner:)
The White House on Monday lifted its COVID-19 testing requirement for those who plan to be in close contact with President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and their spouses, bringing to an end the last coronavirus prevention protocol at the White House.
The White House said the change aligns its policies with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance. The agency last week relaxed its recommendation that those who test positive for COVID-19 isolate for five days. Now, the agency says people can return to work or regular activities if their symptoms are mild and improving and it’s been a day since they’ve had a fever.
The White House testing protocol was instituted shortly after the pandemic began in 2020 when former President Donald Trump was in the White House. It was further strengthened by Biden’s administration when he took office amid the pandemic in January 2021.
Both Trump and Biden contracted the virus while in office. Trump required hospitalization after falling seriously ill weeks before the 2020 presidential election; Biden had minimal symptoms after catching it in the summer of 2022 after having been vaccinated.
More than 1.18 million people in the U.S. died from COVID-19, according to CDC data and 6.85 million were hospitalized over the past four years. More than 270 million people have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S. The vaccines have helped dramatically reduce instances of serious disease and death since their widespread availability in early 2021.
Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses.
Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree?
In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were supposed to stay home for at least five days if they had COVID-19 and then mask for a set period of time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Now the CDC says children can go back to school when their overall symptoms improve and they’re fever-free for 24 hours without taking medication. Students are “encouraged” to wear a mask when they return.
Still, the change may not affect how individual schools urge parents to react when their children fall sick. Schools and child care providers have a mixed record on following CDC recommendations and often look to local authorities for the ultimate word. And sometimes other goals, such as reducing absences, can influence a state or district’s decisions.
The result can be a confusing variation among states and districts, confounding parents whose lives have long been upended by the virus.
For example, during the 2021-2022 school year, only 18 states followed CDC recommendations for mask-wearing in class. When the CDC lifted its masking guidelines in February of 2022, states like Massachusetts followed suit, but California kept the mask requirement for schools.
And in the child care world, some providers have long used more stringent testing and isolation protocols than the CDC has recommended. Reasons have ranged from trying to prevent outbreaks to keeping staff healthy — both for their personal safety and to keep the day care open.
Some states moved to more lenient guidelines ahead of the CDC. California and Oregon recently rescinded COVID-19 isolation requirements, and many districts followed their advice.
In an attempt to minimize school absences and address an epidemic of chronic absenteeism, California has encouraged kids to come to school when mildly sick and said that students who test positive for coronavirus but are asymptomatic can attend school. Los Angeles and San Diego’s school systems, among others, have adopted that policy.
But the majority of districts around the country still have asked parents to isolate children for at least five days before returning to school. Some, including Boston and Atlanta, have required students to mask for another five days and report positive COVID-19 test results to the school.
A school or day care’s specific guidelines are consequential for working parents who must miss work if their child can’t go to school or child care. In October 2023, as the nation’s parents and caretakers wrestled with simultaneous surges of COVID, respiratory syncytial virus and influenza, 104,000 adults reported missing work because of child care issues, the highest number in at least a decade. That number has fallen: Last month, child care problems meant 41,000 adults missed work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Melissa Colagrosso’s child care center in West Virginia dropped special guidelines for COVID about a year ago, she said. Now, they’re the same as other illnesses: A child must be free of severe symptoms such as fever for at least 24 hours before returning to the center.
“We certainly are treating COVID just like we would treat flu or hand, foot and mouth” disease, said Colagrosso, CEO of A Place To Grow Children’s Center in Oak Hill.
As for kids without symptoms who test positive for COVID? Most parents have stopped testing kids unless they have symptoms, Colagrasso said, so it’s a quandary she has not encountered.
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Americans who test positive for COVID-19 no longer need to stay in isolation for five days, U.S. health officials announced Friday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its longstanding guidance, saying that people can return to work or regular activities if their symptoms are mild and improving and it’s been a day since they’ve had a fever.
The change comes at a time when COVID-19 is no longer the public health menace it once was. It dropped from being the nation’s third leading cause of death early in the pandemic to 10th last year.
Most people have some degree of immunity to the coronavirus from past vaccinations or from infections. And many people are not following the five-day isolation guidance anyway, some experts say.
“Our goal here is to continue to protect those at risk for severe illness while also reassuring folks that these recommendation are simple, clear, easy to understand, and can be followed,” said Dr. Mandy Cohen, the CDC’s director,
However, some experts worry that the change may increase the risk of infection for those people who are more vulnerable to developing severe illness.
WHY ARE THE GUIDELINES CHANGING?
COVID-19 is not causing as many hospitalizations and deaths as it did in the first years of the pandemic. The change is an effort to streamline recommendations so they are similar to longstanding recommendations for flu and other respiratory viruses. Many people with a runny nose, cough or other symptoms aren’t testing to distinguish whether it’s COVID-19, flu, or something else, officials say.
This may not be as stringent, but also emphasizes that all people with respiratory symptoms should stay home while they are sick, said Dr. David Margolius, the head of Cleveland’s health department.
There’s been no recent change in the science of how long people with COVID-19 are likely contagious, said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University’s School of Public Health.
“What has changed is how much COVID is harming us as a population,” Nuzzo said.
WHAT ARE THE NEW GUIDELINES?
If you have symptoms, stay home until your symptoms are mild and improving and it’s been a day since you’ve had a fever. But then you can remain cautious by wearing a mask and keeping a distance from others.
There is no change to guidelines for nursing homes and health care facilities, however.
The agency is emphasizing that people should still try to prevent infections in the first place, by getting vaccinated, washing their hands, and taking steps to bring in more outdoor fresh air.
IS THERE OPPOSITION TO THIS CHANGE?
Yes, and even some who understand the rationale for the change have concerns.
“My biggest worry in all of this is that employers will take this change in guidance to require employees to come back to work … before they are ready to, before they feel well enough, and before they are not likely to pose harm to their co-workers,” Nuzzo said.
IS THIS THE FIRST CHANGE FOR COVID-19 ISOLATION GUIDELINES?
No. The CDC originally advised 10 days of isolation, but in late 2021 cut it to five days for Americans who catch the coronavirus and have no symptoms or only brief illnesses. Under that guidance, isolation only ends if a person has been fever-free for at least 24 hours without the use of fever-reducing medications and if other symptoms are resolving.
At the time, agency officials said the changes were in keeping with evidence that people with the coronavirus were most infectious in the two days before and three days after symptoms develop.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Older U.S. adults should roll up their sleeves for another COVID-19 shot, even if they got a booster in the fall, an influential government advisory panel said Wednesday.
The panel voted 11-1 to say Americans 65 and older should get another dose of the updated vaccine that became available in September — if at least four months has passed since their last shot. The committee advises the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who will decide whether to sign off on the recommendation.
The panel’s decision came after a lengthy discussion about whether to say older people “may” get the shots or if they “should” do so. That reflects a debate among experts about how necessary another booster is and whether yet another recommendation will add to the public’s growing vaccine fatigue.
Some doctors say most older adults are adequately protected by the fall shot, which built on immunity derived from earlier vaccinations and exposure to the virus itself. And preliminary studies so far have shown no substantial waning in vaccine effectiveness over six months.
However, the body’s vaccine-induced defenses tend to fade over time, and that happens faster in seniors than in other adults. The committee had recommended COVID-19 booster doses for older adults in 2022 and 2023.
Some members of the advisory panel said a “should” recommendation is meant to more clearly prod doctors and pharmacists to offer the shots.
“Most people are coming in either wanting the vaccine or not,” said Dr. Jamie Loehr, a committee member and family doctor in Ithaca, New York. “I am trying to make it easier for providers to say, ‘Yes, we recommend this.’”
In September, the government recommended a new COVID-19 shot recipe built against a version of the coronavirus called XBB.1.5. That single-target vaccine replaced combination shots that had been targeting both the original coronavirus strain and a much earlier omicron version.
The CDC recommended the new shots for everyone 6 months and older, and allowed that people with weak immune systems could get a second dose as early as two months after the first.
Most Americans haven’t listened. According to the latest CDC data, 13% of U.S. children have gotten the shots and about 22% of U.S. adults have. The vaccination rate is higher for adults 65 and older, at nearly 42%.
“In each successive vaccine, the uptake has gone down,” said Dr. David Canaday, a Case Western Reserve University infectious diseases expert who studies COVID-19 in older people.
“People are tired of getting all these shots all the time,” said Canaday, who does not serve on the committee. “We have to be careful about over-recommending the vaccine.”
But there is subset of Americans — those at higher danger of severe illness and death — who have been asking if a another dose is permissible, said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University vaccines expert who serves on a committee workgroup that has been debating the booster question.
Indeed, CDC survey data suggests that group’s biggest worry about the vaccine is whether it’s effective enough.
Agency officials say that among those who got the latest version of the COVID-19 vaccine, 50% fewer will get sick after they come into contact with the virus compared with those who didn’t get the fall shot.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
A Florida bill to allow people to file wrongful death lawsuits over the death of a fetus is being shelved because of the political fallout from an Alabama Supreme Court decision that frozen embryos are legally protected children.
Republican Sen. Erin Grall decided not to proceed with her bill Monday after opponents cited the Alabama ruling to raise questions about whether the legislation could be used to grant personhood to embryos.
“Although I have worked diligently to respond to questions and concerns, I understand there is still work that needs to be done. It is important we get the policy right with an issue of this significance,” Grall said in a statement released by her office.
Grall tried to ease fears by changing the bill language to define unborn child as “a member of the species Homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb.” She also included language that would have protected pregnant women from being held liable if they lost their embryo.
“This is a backdoor attempt at personhood. It’s a very scary time. People across the country are talking about it, people are finally looking at it,” said Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book. “I think the Republicans across the country realize this is a problem. This isn’t something they should be doing.”
A House version of the bill is ready for a vote by the full chamber but currently isn’t scheduled for a reading.
